Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2023 i Classic Rock

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of so many classic rock albums. One of which is the last masterpiece from the original Ozzy era of Black Sabbath – namely Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Ozzy called it their “final” album. Which, obviously, it wasn’t, but it definitely marked a line in the sand for the band’s original flush of success. And it wasn’t until Tony Iommi came up with the riff for the title track that it all began to come together. Read the story from p26. Talking of riffs and guitars, this month we grabbed Andy Summers for the Classic Rock Interview (p36) in which he talks about conquering the world in The Police, his ‘apprenticeship’ with Zoot Money and his long-time passion for photography. Grand Funk Railroad’s Mark Farner tells…

Mammoth WVH, featuring guitarist and singer Wolfgang Van Halen, have announced the release of their second album, Mammoth II, on August 4 via BMG. It’s preceded by a single, Another Celebration At The End Of The World. Camel cancelled their June tour of the UK due to a health issue with guitarist Andrew Latimer. A statement said: “Throughout his career Andrew has had numerous physical challenges and always overcame them. Camel look to the future for another opportunity to write the final chapter.” Paul Quinn is to cease touring as a member of Saxon, the band he co-founded in 1975. The guitarist will continue to be a part of their recording lineup, and will appear at special selected future shows. Attorneys representing Steven Tyler against a then- 16-year-old female he…

Lynyrd Skynyrd will continue as a touring band despite the recent death of guitarist Gary Rossington, their last original member, commencing with a co-headlining US tour with ZZ Top in the summer. The decision was reached by the current line-up, fronted by Johnny Van Zant, and the estates of Rossington, original singer Ronnie Van Zant and guitarist Allen Collins. Kiss are to have their own biopic, which will come to Netflix in 2024. Band manager Doc McGee reveals that it tells the story of “the first four years of Kiss”. The cast is yet to be confirmed. Thin Lizzy have been voted Ireland’s greatest band of all time in a poll of more than 10,000 people, securing 60.5% of the vote in a head-to-head showdown with U2. Grammy-winning American band…

It was the mantra that took over the world. George Harrison’s first solo No.1 single stands alone in rock history for going against the secular grain as a full-on love song to the Creator. While there’d been some precedent with both the Beach Boys’ God Only Knows and Norman Greenbaum’s Spirit In The Sky, My Sweet Lord was different. The lyric offers nothing but praise – loaded with 40 ‘Lord’s 16 ‘hallelujah’s and nine ‘Hare Krishna’s. SLIDE RULES How is it that George Harrison never once played slide guitar on a Beatles track? He acknowledged that what became the keening sonic trademark of his solo years was influenced by his sitar studies with Ravi Shankar and a love of the instrument’s microtonal possibilities. “Indian music gave me a greater sense…

The tortuous road to The Damned’s latest album Darkadelic – a career-encapsulating return-to-form that finds the revitalised quintet at the top of their game – begins on the stage of The London Palladium. It’s October 2019. All Hallows’ Eve is imminent, and the gothically inclined punk veterans’ Hammer House Of Horror-approved Night Of A Thousand Vampires is upping the ante for live rock theatre. Freaks caper, aerialists twirl, jugulars gape, and Damned vocalist Dave Vanian enters a coffin as Dracula before re-emerging post-interval, head freshly shaved, as Nosferatu. No one is more impressed than the rest of the band, when they finally see the show upon its release on DVD (last October). “That gig was a revelation to me,” admits perma-bereted guitar maestro Captain Sensible. “I didn’t see any of…

Nova Twins / Witch Fever / Uninvited Birmingham O2 Academy 2 Breakout stars render genre redundant. Booked for this year’s Glastonbury, Nova Twins aren’t struggling with similar issues of gender parity when it comes to programming a killer live bill. Glasgow’s Uninvited kick the night off with ultrahooky 90s-style alt.rock in the vein of a ballsier Elastica, then Witch Fever combine the doom-prowl of Sabbath with roiling punk rock. It’s a tonally diverse offering, but one that is lapped up eagerly by a packed-in audience, testament to the genredisregarding qualities of the new generation. “Do we have any boss bitches in?” asks Twins vocalist Amy Love, capturing in one sentence the sense of swagger at the heart of the South London duo. Stylistically they’re a pick ’n’ mix. Songs like…

AC/DC are to perform their first live show in seven years in October as part of anew US-based festival called Power Trip. The three-day event – which also features Ozzy Osbourne as its Friday night headliner – boasts a bill that also includes Iron Maiden, Guns N’ Roses, Metallica and Tool, and is set to be one of the biggest shows in the history of hard rock and heavy metal. The inclusions of AC/DC, who have not performed live since 2016, and Ozzy, who earlier this year was reported to have retired from touring due to ill health, are the most unexpected names on the bill. Ozzy’s manager, wife Sharon, told Piers Morgan her husband is “still rocking”, adding: “He never stopped. He’s back.” Tickets for the festival, which takes…

There’s no ‘off’ switch on Alice Cooper. Even as the legendary shock-rock icon, Hollywood Vampire and consummate master of the macabre attended his recent 75th birthday party – hosted by Poison songwriter Desmond Child in Nashville – his mind kept wandering to the minutiae of his next tour. “I’m the Ziegfeld of rock,” he says. “It’s all about the show. All I can think is: ‘Will that thing work in the second song?’” Prior to hitting the road with fellow Vampires Joe Perry, Johnny Depp and Tommy Henriksen, Alice is busy recording a pair of albums with producer Bob Ezrin and preparing his next all-important stage extravaganza. “Preparing an entirely new production is the calm before the storm… The fun part.” Fifty years on from the release of Billion Dollar…

By his own judgement, Andy Summers does not like to be idle. Isn’t suited to a life of leisure. The late-March morning when we talk is a case in point. Only just returned to his home in Los Angeles from playing a run of shows in Brazil with his Police tribute band Call The Police, he was up early editing the file of photographs he took on the trip. Photography is Summers’s other great passion, seriously so. His black-and-white portraits are handsome and enigmatic. Rumpled hotel rooms and nocturnal ephemera are a speciality, the locations the exotic preserve of the globe-trotting rock superstar. Now a spry 80-year-old, Summers has been famous for six decades as one third of The Police alongside Sting and Stewart Copeland. The band have sold 80…

Gabriela Quintero happily grabs the Grammy statuette and, giggling and proud, holds it up to the webcam. She and Rodrigo Sanchez won the Best Contemporary Instrumental Album category, for Mettavolution – which features their monolithic duo-guitar version of Pink Floyd’s Echoes – at the January 2020 ceremony. It should have been the start of a globe-trotting year. But the year had other plans. Today Rodrigo y Gabriela are in their studio and HQ in Ixtapa. The town overlooks the Pacific on Mexico’s west coast, and sits just 15 minutes’ drive from Zihuatanejo, the beachy paradise that Tim Robbins’s character Andy DuFresne escaped to at the end of The Shawshank Redemption. Bandmates since their teens, both Quintero and Sanchez are approaching their fifties now. They were a couple once. Today they’re…

Spring is well and truly upon us (the British weather might have other ideas, but we’ll let that slide), bringing with it a bounty of fresh rock to get your teeth into as new albums are announced and festival bills fill up. Every music fan’s listening habits are different, but at Classic Rock we often find that the best songs are the ones you just have to listen to again and again. Binge-listening, if you will, hoping you don’t get sick of whatever it is you’ve just fallen in love with. These days song addictions are rife in these Hot List parts, as the year’s release calendar starts to look nicely busy. We love this month’s selection – some of the names you’ll recognise, some are newer round here –…

Pixies London The Roundhouse A blitz of deathless alt.rock classics, plus a whole heap of Doggerel. “While I prefer the original version of You Really Got Me, she will defer to the Van Halen version,” Black Francis bawls, introducing new-album track Dregs Of The Wine with the comedy excuse he and his first wife used to give for their divorce. It’s the most exposed and revealing Charles Thompson has got on stage in almost 20 years of Pixies’ secondphase shows, and highlights how Boston’s indie-rock pioneers are maturing into their rich legend. Whereas previous tours were dominated by firstera classics – Where Is My Mind?, Gouge Away, Monkey Gone To Heaven, Debaser et al – and barely smattered with reunion material, tonight they slot almost all of their sublime eighth…

The Inspector Cluzo London The Roundhouse Mont de Marsan agriculturalists hit pay dirt. One imagines the majority of tonight’s audience are largely unfamiliar with the works of The Inspector Cluzo, a pair of fiercely independent Gascony farmers now on their ninth album. Yet while punters are here to witness headliners Eels, they’re certainly not above affording an ovation to the unlikely, some might say odd, couple at centre stage. Taking advantage of the expectation-free, relative anonymity of playing to someone else’s fans, the Cluzo pack their set with choice selections from their latest album Horizon, a virtual agro-ecological manifesto set to an engaging, hook-heavy combination of classic rock swagger and bass player-free funk. Sartorially correct drummer Mathieu Jourdan carefully hangs up his cap before setting to work, while Zep/Page-reminiscent guitarist/schizophrenic…

Tom Leadon September 16, 1952 – March 22, 2023 Guitarist Tom Leadon was a co-founding member of Tom Petty’s original countryrock band from the 1970s, Mudcrutch, and returned to the line-up when it reconvened in 2007. His brother Bernie was guitarist with the Eagles. The 70-yearold from Minnesota, who also played bass for Linda Ronstadt and with the band Silver, died of natural causes. Jim Durkin February 7, 1965 – March 8, 2023 Californian thrashers Dark Angel are mourning their lead guitarist Jim Durkin, declaring themselves “deeply saddened and crushed” over the loss of the 58-yearold. Durkin had played with Dark Angel from 1981 until a break-up in 1992 before reuniting between 2002 and 2005, and then once again from 2013 until the present day. Bobby Caldwell August 15, 1951…

George Brigman was an 18-year-old Baltimore-based guitarist/vocalist when he recorded Jungle Rot. Initially released in a run of 1,000, it has been bootlegged many times, and original copies are highly sought after by collectors. Allegedly, Brigman had been playing guitar for less than a year prior to the recording. This is somewhat hard to believe, as his understanding of the instrument is more than several steps above rudimentary. He flew the freak-rock flag high, creating gloriously raw, noisy garage-punk in a psychedelic Stooges kind of vein. You can almost smell the burning weed and get high from the grinding fuzz tones and snarling, slacker-glazed vocal rants of the title track. I Feel Alright and It’s Misery are lo-fi dirges with the rhythm section barely keeping things together. DMT is no…

“I’VE ALWAYS HATED sugar-coating things that, at their core, are actually kind of ugly,” says Island Of Love guitarist/vocalist Karim Newble. “We came up in the UK in the hardcore, punk and metal scene where music was noisy, heavy and really unattractive, and I feel like there’s beauty in that being what it is.” The London-based band’s bittersweet alt.grunge, which Newble describes as “pretty music covered in spikes”, has drawn comparisons to the warm, unpolished fuzz fests of the lo-fi giants of the 80s and 90s: Dinosaur Jr, Teenage Fanclub, early Weezer. “A lot of stuff I was writing was worshipping [indie veterans] Duster and Sebadoh,” he says, remembering the early writing sessions with bandmate Linus Munch. The pair, who began passing demos back and forth in 2020, had quickly…

Last year Crown Lands played the after-party at a Formula 1 Grand Prix, at the personal behest of Bahrain’s Prince Salman. “He’s the coolest guy ever,” says the band’s guitarist/bassist/keyboard player Kevin Comeau. “He’s really into rock music. We’d toured with Greta Van Fleet, and I guess Prince Salman reached out to their manager to ask if he knew any other new interesting rock bands. He watched our Odyssey live performance video, and took a chance on us. Nick Mason was in the audience. Our song The Oracle is a fourteen-minute epic with a lot of Floyd in it, and the whole time I was just like: ‘Do it for Nick, man! Do it for Nick!’ It was amazing.” Twenty-something duo Crown Lands derive much from Pink Floyd on Fearless…

Devin Townsend Bexhill De La Warr Pavilion Heavy Devvy levels Bexxy. Devin Townsend’s shows are never for the faint-hearted, and the madcap Canadian’s debut in Bexhill-on-Sea begins in a typically oddball manner with his expression of gratitude to driver Mark for cleaning the tour bus’s toilet. “It was clogged for two days, and he got down on his hands and knees, right up to his elbows. Thank you, Mark!” Townsend is on the final lap of a world tour on the back of Lightwork, an album that saw him return to the Royal Albert Hall amid triumphant scenes. Swathed in echo and reverb and decorated with samples, the sound is simply gargantuan, with ton-ofbricks drummer Darby Todd the cornerstone of its carnage. For the new album’s juddering Dimensions, Townsend brings…

Asa teenager he’d been involved in newspaper journalism, but by 1970 Deptford lad Steve Harley was taking a guitar around London folk clubs, going from a “weekend mod” phase to being a “weekend hippie”. The troubadour side mixed with the emerging glam and art-rock scenes, and Harley found fame with the wonderfully arch and flamboyant Cockney Rebel. Currently on the road with his Acoustic Band, he tells CR about some of the sparks that lit his imagination. THE FIRST MUSIC I REMEMBER HEARING Before Radio 1 existed we had The Light Programme on the airwaves. My mother was a jazz singer, and on Sundays there’d be bigband music and she’d sing along in the kitchen. For pop it would have been from my older cousins who were buying Buddy Holly…